Why Harry Found Out About the Queen’s Death From the BBC

Harry wrote in Spare that he got no reply from William when he texted to see how his brother planned to get to Scotland from England to be with their ailing grandmother at Balmoral on Sept. 8, 2022, so he booked his own British Airways flight and went by himself. As they were landing, Harry checked his phone: He saw a text from Meghan asking him to call ASAP and the BBC News alert that the queen had died.

While he was in the air, according to Endgame, his team tried to get the palace to hold off on releasing the death announcement until Harry had been informed personally by family.

They “literally had to beg for them to wait for his plane to land,” a close family source told Scobie, “and they reluctantly agreed to hold the statement back for a little bit.” But Harry’s plane had to circle for awhile due to stormy weather, and during that time the palace sent the release. 

According to Scobie, any later reports attributed to palace sources saying that Charles had broken the news to Harry before the world found out, or had at least tried to call him, were just the royals trying to save face. (Harry also mentioned no such attempts in Spare.)

“They could have waited just a little longer,” a friend of Harry’s told Scobie, “it would have been nothing in the grand scheme of things, but no one respected that at all.”